Peter Rabe - Murder Me for Nickels

“And now that we’ve heard from wee little Walter with the nursery rhymes, comes more business.”

“All right,” he said. “Second verse.”

“What sometimes happens in the business,” I told him, “is that one manufacturer rents a master to another manufacturer.”

“To lose money, of course. The one with the gold mine master wants to lose money.”

“Make money. All it means to the owner is to get more records pressed than his own plant is putting out.”

“Your pressing plant rents a master and pays the owner as much as a jobber would for each record sold?”

“For every record I press off a master I pay the owner the price per record he would get from the jobber.”

“And that’s the reason, I suppose, why everybody does it that way, huh, boy wonder?”

“No. Not everybody is doing it, because everybody else is not a friend of yours. That’s how my outfit is going to do it.”

“Break it down,” he said. “So I can hear the money.”

“The outfit who owns the master gets two cents a side, regular records.”

“All right Let’s say four cents the record.”

“The artist gets three cents, musicians’ union gets two cents, pressing in ten thousand lots costs fifteen, and the jobber gets thirty-one.”

“Bascot got less.”

“I know. That’s because you’re special.”

“And I don’t buy in ten thousand lots.”

“I’m breaking it down standard-like, Walter, and will you now shut up?”

“Okay. The record cost me fifty-five cents now.”

“And the owner of the master got his four cents. I, Loujack, Inc., paying the manufacturer his cut, can also press and sell you for the same price you used to pay Bascot.”

This was the point for him to be impressed. He was, because he didn’t talk right away. He was thinking about running the works like before, minus jobber troubles, with Benotti out.

Then he said, “And I pay you that price, Jack, you make dough off the pressing, and you make dough off the stake you got in the jukebox business. Is that how the coin falls, right-hand man?”

We had to talk that back and forth for a while. I had to show him again that I wouldn’t make a cent, that I would have to pay the owner as if he were pressing his own discs, or else I would never be able to swing this kind of deal.

“And who pays you? I just want to be sure, trusted friend, that nobody pays you.”

“I’m going to pay the cost of pressing out of my cut from the jukes, damn your little pointed head, Lippit! I’m doing it for the love of you, for the jukebox coin, and to give ourselves time till Bascot comes around!”

“And when you go broke?” He had to be nasty about it.

“Then you go broke.”

That was clear and simple. He saw it and nodded, and the fact put us on the same side again. Maybe two weeks before Benotti got back on his feet, which was two weeks for me to arrange use of the masters. Then some months, more or less, while I ran Loujack at a loss, and while Lippit and I had to knock out Benotti for good. By then we had to have a jobber. Or by then we’d go broke.

He looked up from the table and grinned.

“Too bad. Would be nice, if I could arrange it for you to go broke and not me. Shake?”

We shook.

Then he hustled me out as if we had two minutes instead of two weeks, which was more like the old teamwork relationship between him and me. I set it up to fly to Chicago and he went to keep the local pot from developing steam. And he paid for my ticket, just to show no hard feelings.

He didn’t give me what a hood might call ice. I was a businessman and called it grease. I took what I would need and did, as a matter of fact, smear my way into a number of places. There was the lunch where you didn’t taste the food and only the right-hand margin of the menu was of any importance. There were drinks where the number of rounds counted most of all, and there was even the elderly VIP who liked special services which not just any professional woman could render. All kinds of business is still business.

Anyway, I got the masters.

I got some on a press-number basis, and some on a time-rental basis, and I paid a jobber’s price every time. It was slippery going, what with all that grease, but when I left I was clean.

On the plane I looked at the big, blue nothing outside, and on the way down the ramp I said thank you to the stewardess and that it had been truly a wonderful trip. Back in town I didn’t go straight to Lippit. I went home, took a shower, changed clothes. I sat on the bed a minute and looked at the phone, and for a minute had a notion to call somebody whom I didn’t know.

Then I went to Lippit’s.

He wasn’t home. I called the club and the desk voice said there was nobody in the room upstairs. And, further, that Mister Lippit was not in the building.

There had been changes while I was gone. Including Davy not holding down the phone.

I called the shop and the foreman answered. “Fine,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”

But he always said that.

“Is there anything that could be finer?” I asked him.

“Well, Jimmy didn’t come in today. Claims he’s got a cold.”

“And Mister Lippit. Has he come in today?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because everything’s fine, I guess.”

I had enough of that and hung up.

I went to the building on Duncan and what with the shift in importance that had taken place recently I didn’t go upstairs but stayed on the ground floor.

That pressing plant was humming. The first half-dozen masters had gotten there a few days before and there was a full crew tending all the machines and a double crew at the tables in back. They weren’t even putting labels on both sides of the discs. Just on one side, and not always the same one. Mostly, they were packing. And that with more speed than care, seeing the stuff didn’t go very far.

“Keeping full time?” I asked the old man.

“Overtime.”

“Oh.”

“Never been like this, far as I recollect.”

“Miracles don’t come that often. You still on the Ted Curdy series?”

“We squeeze that in, nighttimes.”

“Overtime.”

“Double time.”

“Oh.”

“And the Shayne Combo, same thing,” said the old man.

“You finished the run of Mitch Pockard?”

“We didn’t have room. We let him go for a while.”

Those last three were Blue Beat business. The place had never worked so hard or lost so much money.

I went into the office and checked that end of it Busy, busy, busy.

“Been keeping up?” I asked the bookkeeper there.

“Reorganized it a little, the way Mister Lippit suggested.”

“Of course.”

He had a big pile of stuff on his desk.

“You need help, looks like.”

“I got help, but he’s out to lunch.”

“Oh.”

“But a good worker,” said my bookkeeper man. “A real flash with the Payables.”

“All your stuff here, that’s Receivables?”

“Payables, same as his.”

I didn’t say ‘oh’ again and I didn’t ask any more, because it would all come out the same. The place had never worked so hard catching up with the Payables.

For old times’ sake I took the elevator to the fourth floor and there was one familiar sight, anyway. Herbie at the desk, and what he said was familiar, too.

“Oo-man!” he said.

“Not again.”

“No. This one’s different. But oo-man!”

“Can she sing?”

“Ask Conrad.”

I went through to the messy room with the racks and the cables and one of the agents was there, talking to Conrad. They both looked at me and Conrad said, “You did it this time, Jack!” And the agent said, “But too bad you didn’t have her signed.”